Copper Clad Bronze

Key Characteristics of Copper-Clad Bronze in Cat6 Wire

  • Material Composition: It features a secondary or recycled copper/bronze alloy core with a thin copper skin on the outside. 
  • High Resistance: Bronze and impure recycled copper have much higher electrical resistance than pure bare copper—typically around 40Ω to 110Ω per 100 meters, compared to ~30Ω for pure oxygen-free copper.
  • Shorter Transmission Distance: While pure copper Cat6 can reliably run up to 100+ meters, copper-clad bronze or similar non-standard conductors suffer from severe attenuation and are typically limited to stable distances of 80 meters or less. 
  • Standards Compliance: Like Copper-Clad Aluminum (CCA), copper-clad bronze does not complywith TIA/EIA, UL, or ETL networking standards for genuine Category 6 cabling. 
  • Power over Ethernet (PoE) Risks: Due to high resistance and current imbalance, these cables generate excessive heat, making them unsafe or unreliable for PoE devices like IP cameras or VoIP phones. 

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Copper-clad Bronze cable refers to a layer of oxygen-free copper plated outside of bronze, so it is also called bronze cable. This type of cable is generally Sold by most manufacturer declaring it as Copper cable, and there are few  people who know about it. The conductor of bronze cable belongs to secondary recycled copper, which contains Zinc with Copper becomes Bronze Alloy. The resistance of 100 meters is approximately 40Ω, and it can transmit approximately 80 meters. It has strong oxidation resistance and long service life.

The resistance of bronze is much higher than that of ordinary copper-plated aluminum and oxygen-free copper, so the effective transmission distance of copper-clad bronze is much shorter than copper-clad aluminum. However, the physical properties of copper are relatively stable and not easy to oxidize, so the service life is longer. Although it looks the same on the surface, if burned, the oxygen-free copper layer on the surface of the copper will melt quickly.